Generational Politics: Hush Trips Among Gen Z Workers

15,746 Views | 223 Replies | Last: 1 yr ago by TxTarpon
TxTarpon
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If you subscribe to any BizJournal, then this was a featured article this week.
I found it posted without a paywall.



[url=https://www.prweb.com/releases/resumebuilder_com_survey_finds_1_in_6_generation_z_workers_used_a_virtual_background_to_fool_employers_while_taking_a_hush_trip/prweb19473377.htm][/url]
Quote:

Survey Finds 1 in 6 Generation Z Workers Used a Virtual Background to Fool Employers While Taking a 'Hush Trip'

Based on survey results, 44 percent of Gen Zers surveyed say they have taken a vacation without their employer's permission. Of this group, 57 percent say they gave the impression that they were still working normal hours even when they were not. In fact, 4 percent say they worked less than one hour, 28 percent say 1 to 2 hours, 30 percent say 3 to 4 hours, and 23 percent say 5 to 6 hours. Only 14 percent say they worked seven or more hours.

Additionally, of employees who tried to keep up the appearance of working a full day, 65 percent say they used a virtual background to fool their employer.
In the old days this was called "theft of time" and these people were terminated immediately.

Quote:

Survey results also highlight the reasons why workers took 'hush trips.'
Of those who took an undisclosed trip,
51 percent say they did so because their 'PTO request was not approved,'
27 percent say they 'had no PTO to use,' and
20 percent say they 'didn't want to use PTO.'

Among all hush trip takers,
41 percent say their employer found out,
45 percent say their employer did not, and
14 percent are unsure.

Of those who were discovered,
71 percent say they were reprimanded, and
7 percent say they were fired.
Shows how desperate employers are now to keep people. (or they don't have the sophisticated software to garner all the facts?)
When unemployment was 7-8% and employers had their choice of candidates.
The people I know still in industry say it is tough to find good workers.

This boils down to deception where these Gen Z workers are telling their employers they are working, but they are not working and are on vacation. This is not WTH, this is deception, lying to your employer.
Kvetch
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AG
Who cares as long as they do their jobs?
TxTarpon
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Kvetch said:

Who cares as long as they do their jobs?
Perpetuating a fraud is not doing their job.
4stringAg
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AG
No doubt this is occurring. I know at least 4 people at my company that out and out moved to different states during the Covid work from home stuff and never told their boss until way after the fact when they started bringing us back to the office. I was pretty amazed they weren't fired or reprimanded/demoted but they pretty much got away with it. Its not that they moved and were still doing their jobs but more the deceptive/dishonest way it was perpetrated.
bonfarr
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AG
My wife has worked remote for the last three years and from what I can see in a typical day she puts about 4 hours of real work in and that includes all of the Zoom calls. She logs in about 8:30 and puts together emails and any docs she might need to share on one of the calls she has that day. Then they have a Zoom call for about an hour. After that she has lunch, folds laundry, watches TV, plays with the dogs, etc until the afternoon Zoom call. Then she works feverishly for about an hour from 4:30-5:30 to finish any work for the day. I imagine that is probably similar to most remote workers and why it is such a touchy subject when anyone brings up ending remote work.
TxTarpon
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You are exactly right!
That workload is not her fault.
That is her employer's fault.
They are not measuring workload properly.

She is home, ready and available not secretly sipping margaritas in Cancun while saying she home.
Old May Banker
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AG
Kvetch said:

Who cares as long as they do their jobs?

As a general rule, the man signing the front of their checks cares.
cryption
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I manage an IT team, and my team can literally do their job anywhere. We're a meritocracy. As long as the work is getting done, who cares? The people who slack of course don't get free reign - but the ones who get their jobs done I literally could care less where they do it from.

My people are paid for their skillset, and completion of projects / tasks. If it takes 30 hours or 60 hours the work has to get done. I'm not paying them for hours. That's how a meritocracy works.
Robert C. Christian
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AG
TxTarpon said:

Kvetch said:

Who cares as long as they do their jobs?
Perpetuating a fraud is not doing their job.


Are they salaried or hourly? If salaried and deliverables and dates are met that isn't fraud. That is called doing your job.

If hourly and you are faking hours, that is fraud.
Aggie95
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AG
I am SHOCKED that people are gaming the wfh/remote work setup.
TxTarpon
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Old May Banker said:

Kvetch said:

Who cares as long as they do their jobs?

As a general rule, the man signing the front of their checks cares.
Damn right!
TxTarpon
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Robert C. Christian said:


Are they salaried or hourly? If salaried and deliverables and dates are met that isn't fraud. That is called doing your job.
Wrong. "Hush trips" are about fraud and deception.
If you are supposed to be in your Houston home doing work, but are secretly in Cancun, taking your work computer out of the US and telling your employer that you are home, then you are committing fraud.

If you work for an employer who says "I don't care where you live or work," then enjoy.
Quote:

If hourly and you are faking hours, that is fraud.
Same with salaried lawyers and medical professionals who say they saw nonexistent patients.
TxTarpon
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cryption said:

I manage an IT team, and my team can literally do their job anywhere. We're a meritocracy. As long as the work is getting done, who cares? The people who slack of course don't get free reign - but the ones who get their jobs done I literally could care less where they do it from.
Again, if your policy is "I don't care where you work", then enjoy.
"Hush trips" are about fraud and deception.
Quote:

My people are paid for their skillset, and completion of projects / tasks. If it takes 30 hours or 60 hours the work has to get done. I'm not paying them for hours. That's how a meritocracy works.
You pay them per job?
Logos Stick
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4stringAg said:

No doubt this is occurring. I know at least 4 people at my company that out and out moved to different states during the Covid work from home stuff and never told their boss until way after the fact when they started bringing us back to the office. I was pretty amazed they weren't fired or reprimanded/demoted but they pretty much got away with it. Its not that they moved and were still doing their jobs but more the deceptive/dishonest way it was perpetrated.


I'm not following you. So they were told to WFH and they moved to a different state and did their work from there. That new state was their home then.

Not sure why they should be fired?!
ChemEAg08
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AG
We are letting more folks WFH/Work from elsewhere but it depends on how much their role lets them work remotely and if they've proven they are making enough face to face time already with their teams.

Those that are taking advantage of it to the detriment of the company likely aren't achieving as much as they need to be assessed in the higher tiers (which means they won't get as many raises/promotions).
aggie93
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AG
Like all things remote work can be abused but it also can be very useful.

I login at 730 vs getting fully ready and driving in to work and starting after 830. Lunch break is just heating something up and working at my home office. Last night I was responding to emails at Midnight. My wife also works from home and bills 65-70 hours a week.

Do I take some more time to do things I wouldn't if I was in the office? Sure, but I put in more total hours. When I go in the office it's a lot more social and things aren't nearly as well set up for me. By the time I drive home I have no desire to check in on work emails and stuff though I don't mind when I am at home as I see it as a tradeoff. I am far less efficient in the office unless it is just an occasional drop in, going in every day would just waste a lot of time and money for me.

As for the vacation thing, I also find I rarely completely unplug on vacation. I usually put in a couple hours of work because if I don't it just creates too many problems. So I don't feel bad about sometimes traveling and working from a different location. I certainly don't end up using all my alloted vacation.

Folks act like people go into the office and are uber efficient, did you not watch "Office Space"? That was a lot more of how work culture was in my experience in the '90s. Of course I do Recruiting so I am on the phone/computer all day and I have hiring managers and candidates all over the country and sometimes the world. It really depends on what you do.

The key point is productivity. If the productivity is there and you are disciplined enough to WFH or even travel then great. It's kind of like how I put everything on my CC and pay it off every month so I can get FF miles. Some people have discipline and some don't. If you as an employer keep a person that doesn't have discipline and won't adjust that's on you as much as the employee.
"The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help."

Ronald Reagan
ChemEAg08
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AG
4stringAg said:

No doubt this is occurring. I know at least 4 people at my company that out and out moved to different states during the Covid work from home stuff and never told their boss until way after the fact when they started bringing us back to the office. I was pretty amazed they weren't fired or reprimanded/demoted but they pretty much got away with it. Its not that they moved and were still doing their jobs but more the deceptive/dishonest way it was perpetrated.


They likely got away with it because the labor market was so tight. Employers were struggling to retain/keep/bring in talent.
fka ftc
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Logos Stick said:

4stringAg said:

No doubt this is occurring. I know at least 4 people at my company that out and out moved to different states during the Covid work from home stuff and never told their boss until way after the fact when they started bringing us back to the office. I was pretty amazed they weren't fired or reprimanded/demoted but they pretty much got away with it. Its not that they moved and were still doing their jobs but more the deceptive/dishonest way it was perpetrated.


I'm not following you. So they were told to WFH and they moved to a different state and did their work from there. That new state was their home then.

Not sure why they should be fired?!
The bolded part is deception and if I find out an employee has deceived me, no matter how trivial, they are gone.

Deception reflects character, or lack thereof.
cryption
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No I pay them for a specific skillset. It's very hard to find quality people so I mentally categorize my employees into 3 groups.

1. Top performers - literally can make their schedule, do whatever they need / want. I know they will get their work done no matter what so why would I care where they work? There guys will pull 70 hours weeks if I need them to - so if they want a 20 hour week when it's slow that's fine with me.

2. Middle performers - case by case basis when requests come in on where to work / what to do

3. Bottom performers - come into the office, have metrics to meet, when I make cuts they're the first to go. Admittedly if these guys did a hush trip they'd get fired - but in my instance I have one person and he's on PIP anyway.

It seems more like a failure in leadership that these hush trips happen - clear is kind and there needs to be transparency at all levels for things to really work smoothly. That's the whole thing around a meritocracy. You are based solely on performance - not butts in seats.

The problem is, if you don't take care of your top performers they will go to someone who will. People with an great skillset as individual contributors know what they are - and can get exactly what they want. If you don't give your top performers more leeway, then they will leave and you're stuck with grade 2 and 3 employees and the business suffers. Your top performers are going to produce more and pick up the slack for the mediocre ones - so there has to be some benefit to them.

My guys know me well enough that if they wanted to work in Cancun, they'd just tell me and I wouldn't care because if something came up they'd be there. We're all salaried employees - so they're not paid per job - but they know what the job IS (we're an infrastructure and cybersecurity team). That's what I mean by I pay for a skillet - a top tier network guy is hard to find through the masses of crap networking people. My top guy can literally do anything he wants but I know he will get the job done and be there to put out a fire if I need him. I'd call him at 3am and he'll answer and work his butt off - so you better believe that if he wants to work from the beach I'm 100% fine with that.

Hourly and low skilled jobs, perhaps I'd agree that they need more monitoring or even be in the office. But I try not to keep those people around anyway and build a team that respects the work and i respect their time back.

If I were a clock watcher, made them butts in seats to browse reddit in slow times - I'd lose all my skillset to better employers.
TxTarpon
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It is not about the WFH practice.
It is about the deception that the worker creates the perception they are working, when they are on vacation.
GAC06
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AG
If the employer couldn't tell whether they were present for work or doing their job, it sounds like an employer problem.
cryption
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If the employee is producing the same results and hits all their KPIs, it doesn't matter where they do it from. Metrics speak for themselves. But to your point, if the employee feels the needs to be deceptive then that's probably a bad work environment and they have already lost all their top talent anyway to better employers so they probably have to be more draconian. But that's an employer problem and a culture problem.

Attract and hire the best people and you don't have to worry about hush trips and this stuff - because you already let your top performers balance work and life.
The Banned
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bonfarr said:

My wife has worked remote for the last three years and from what I can see in a typical day she puts about 4 hours of real work in and that includes all of the Zoom calls. She logs in about 8:30 and puts together emails and any docs she might need to share on one of the calls she has that day. Then they have a Zoom call for about an hour. After that she has lunch, folds laundry, watches TV, plays with the dogs, etc until the afternoon Zoom call. Then she works feverishly for about an hour from 4:30-5:30 to finish any work for the day. I imagine that is probably similar to most remote workers and why it is such a touchy subject when anyone brings up ending remote work.


There are a few companies (very few) that have moved to performance based employment. Get the projects/service done we've asked you to get done in the timeline we've asked you to get it done, and I don't give a crap how many hours it takes.

There needs to be a shift away from $X per year gets X number of hours per week. That simply encourages employees to sandbag how much they can get done. Pay $X for X amount of work encourages employees to finish faster. If you find they have additional bandwidth, then pay them more to get more work done.
dreyOO
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It's not just gen Z. I'm quite certain of peers of mine that have done it. Others I thought were holding down a side gig as well.

Remote working really has allowed those with lower ethical standards to get away with crap.
TxTarpon
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Quote:

1. Top performers - literally can make their schedule, do whatever they need / want. I know they will get their work done no matter what so why would I care where they work? There guys will pull 70 hours weeks if I need them to - so if they want a 20 hour week when it's slow that's fine with me.
Sorry, my question is along the lines are they paid salary W2 or by the job 1099?
You answered that below, thank you.
Quote:

Admittedly if these guys did a hush trip they'd get fired - but in my instance I have one person and he's on PIP anyway.
There it is.
Quote:

My guys know me well enough that if they wanted to work in Cancun, they'd just tell me and I wouldn't care because if something came up they'd be there. We're all salaried employees - so they're not paid per job - but they know what the job IS (we're an infrastructure and cybersecurity team).
That answers my question, thank you.
Notice how they will tell you "Hey man, I am in Tahiti for the next two weeks, call me if you need me." vs "Yeah I am in Houston, but in reality, in Tahiti, giving the perception they are working."
93MarineHorn
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Quote:

My wife has worked remote for the last three years and from what I can see in a typical day she puts about 4 hours of real work in and that includes all of the Zoom calls. She logs in about 8:30 and puts together emails and any docs she might need to share on one of the calls she has that day. Then they have a Zoom call for about an hour. After that she has lunch, folds laundry, watches TV, plays with the dogs, etc until the afternoon Zoom call. Then she works feverishly for about an hour from 4:30-5:30 to finish any work for the day. I imagine that is probably similar to most remote workers and why it is such a touchy subject when anyone brings up ending remote work.


This is the feeling I get whenever I'm working with a customer that is wfh. They seem to have personal stuff going on while I'm trying to work with them thru a problem. I know wfh is great for many fields, but sometimes you really need to be at your workplace to competently do your job.
cryption
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So I get where you're coming from - but in your instance an employee saying they're in Houston but being multiple times zones away is really a fault of the employer. That means there's a few things going on. They aren't producing enough for you to notice a massive time zone difference and don't need that employee. They are a bottom performer and don't have anything in place to bring them up or get rid of them. They don't have a transparent relationship with their leadership, again failure of leadership.

I dunno man, I guess the more I think about it - I totally see your side of the argument in low skillset job - people who just push papers all day etc. But those jobs can and will be automated anyway so it's going to work itself out. I guess the point I'm trying to make - at least in my highly technical industry - it's a non-issue. The wheat separates from the chaff very quickly, usually at the helpdesk level, and it's not something I would even remotely care about with guys making 150k+.

So then maybe it's really a job / industry specific problem. Combined with a employer / poor management problem.
TxTarpon
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Quote:

If the employee is producing the same results and hits all their KPIs, it doesn't matter where they do it from.
That is not the issue.
"Hush trips" are hidden from the employer.
Quote:

Attract and hire the best people and you don't have to worry about hush trips and this stuff - because you already let your top performers balance work and life.
Top performers don't hide trips.
They tell you "I am going there, call me if you need me."
Bird Poo
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AG
As long as you get your shlt done and are present for calls and meetings, I don't give a damn where you work from.

In fact, I assume my employees are taking advantage of the perk. It's definitely a benefit that keeps young professionals around and allows for more official vacation time.
ABATTBQ11
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AG
fka ftc said:

Logos Stick said:

4stringAg said:

No doubt this is occurring. I know at least 4 people at my company that out and out moved to different states during the Covid work from home stuff and never told their boss until way after the fact when they started bringing us back to the office. I was pretty amazed they weren't fired or reprimanded/demoted but they pretty much got away with it. Its not that they moved and were still doing their jobs but more the deceptive/dishonest way it was perpetrated.


I'm not following you. So they were told to WFH and they moved to a different state and did their work from there. That new state was their home then.

Not sure why they should be fired?!
The bolded part is deception and if I find out an employee has deceived me, no matter how trivial, they are gone.

Deception reflects character, or lack thereof.


Where they live and their personal lives are none of your GD business
TxTarpon
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Quote:

So I get where you're coming from - but in your instance an employee saying they're in Houston but being multiple times zones away is really a fault of the employer.
It is about fraud and deception, not productivity.

If everything is on the table, up front and honest, then enjoy.

Your job sounds pretty high tech and cool.
Good stuff to be in.
cryption
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I get what you're saying - I promise I do. I've come around to your way of thinking in specific roles and industries - that I completely see being automated out of existence. I get they're hidden from the employer. The point I'm trying to make is - if the employee can get away with it they probably aren't producing enough to bring value to the company and are dead weight on the budget anyway. Or the company doesn't know what they're doing.

On a basic technical level, for example - any company worth it's salt has conditional access policies in place to at minimum alert when systems / VPN are accessed from outside the country. So they should at least know what's going on. Or there's a failure of basic policy and the company needs to get their act together.

Any centrally managed device is going to have location services on it, any basic MDM knows where a device is accessing resources from. So poor management aside, it's bad IT practices not knowing where your employees are accessing your data from. Hell even basic MFA products like DUO keep a log of access location
Ryan the Temp
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AG
There are technical solutions to some of this. I have a friend whose IT network security is setup such that if he logs into the work network using an IP address that is outside of Texas, or his mobile hotspot is pinging towers outside of Texas, it will lock him out of the network. This sort of thing could easily be used to deter or prevent employees from working outside a particular geographic area.
TxTarpon
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I wager your company and industry are exponentially more advanced than most non tech small businesses.

On the risk management side of things, if someone went to an Australia and did work, then for it to be legal, there is an entire set of forms and approvals needed to complete.

Even other states. Your Texas based company may not have worker's comp insurance for Colorado or even a health insurance plan that has easy access to doctors or clinics. Not to mention they employee there maybe subject to state income tax.

When everything is honest, up front and on the table, it is all good.
The deception part is what is bad.



TxTarpon
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Ryan the Temp said:

There are technical solutions to some of this. I have a friend whose IT network security is setup such that if he logs into the work network using an IP address that is outside of Texas, or his mobile hotspot is pinging towers outside of Texas, it will lock him out of the network. This sort of thing could easily be used to deter or prevent employees from working outside a particular geographic area.
That is what the cartel is doing with Biden's app in Mexico.
 
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